AbstractReviewed are the recent laser fusion research activities of ILE, Osaka University. The issues which are discussed here are: (i) the present status of the GEKKO XII laser system; (ii) recent achievements on implosion hydrodynamics; (iii) implosion stability and symmetry in GEKKO XII experiments; and (iv) fundamental research related to fast ignitors. One of the important recent achievements is the finding of reduction of the Rayleigh–Taylor growth rate due to the non-local heat transport in directly-driven ablation plasmas. Another significant progress is the observation and analysis of the intense laser channeling in over-dense plasmas. Those two achievements are described in detail.